Eternal Minute
by imasupernaturalmoose
Summary: An eternal minute. An eternal consequence. Castiel makes a mistake. Its a costly mistake. It costs him everything.


_Broken bottles in the hotel lobby  
Seems to me like I'm just scared of never feeling it again_

Dean lay on the floor, the glass surrounding his head. He was curled in a fetal position, trying to shield himself. Tears ran down his face: salty, warm streaks full of pain and sadness. A slightly damp patch was beginning to form under his left shoulder as the liquid from the broken bottles spread. He shivered.

A stupid thing. So stupid. Why had he looked? Why? He had everything he needed right beside him and he still looked. God, he was so stupid. So fucking stupid. And now he'd lost it all. He'd lost all the love and affection and everything he'd been given. Damn himself back to hell! He was filled with self-loathing.

 _I know it's crazy to believe in silly things  
But it's not that easy_

Cas sobbed, sitting broken on a park bench in some deadbeat town in the middle of nowhere. He was ridiculous. Cas was used to watching him look but tonight, tonight had been different. There was more in his eyes than the normal once over that he gave every living soul. It was a genuine appreciation and the jealousy had consumed him. He had believed, for an eternal minute, that Dean was bored of him and no longer wanted him. And he had exploded.

The angelic power inside him had burst free. Humans flew, glass shattered, the wooden furniture was completely obliterated. The eternal minute had been enough. A stupid thought in an eternal minute and he was gone. He hurt the man he loved the most, the man he loved more than his father and brethren, and then left. Just turned and left. He walked out, calm and composed, and then spread his wings and flew. He had noticed that his wings were a crimson, deep green and a violent purple colour when he put them away.

 _I remember it now, it takes me back to when it all first started  
But I've only got myself to blame for it, and I accept it now_

Dean let the tears flow. He didn't try to wipe them away. He remembered when he had first met Cas. He remembered Hell. He remembered how he screamed for the angel to leave him alone. How he wasn't worthy of salvation. And he remembered how the angel gripped his left shoulder tightly, firmly and lifted his soul, kicking and screaming, from Hell. He remembered how bright his Grace had been. It was blinding in the dankness of Hell.

And then, the Grace he remembered from Hell, burst free. Except this time, instead of salvation, destruction was ripe. And it was all his fault. He had looked, he had been in the wrong, and now humans were hurt and so was he. But he didn't care. His angel was gone, the sequence of events completely turned around compared to the first time they had met. It was his fault. He accepted that. He was responsible for the damage and hurt around him and he knew it but he didn't care. His angel was gone. Cas was gone.

 _It's time to let it go, go out and start again  
But it's not that easy_

Castiel sobbed harder. His Grace still burned inside him, wanting to be free. It was wild, untamed. Through tear soaked lashes, he looked about him. And when he saw the emptiness of the park, he unleashed it. His power ripped out of him, a nuclear blast of holy life blood. Trees were obliterated, turned to ash where they stood. The grass was stripped back, the concrete cracked and shards flew. The bench he was sat on crumbled and Jimmy Novak's body fell to the floor, a solid thump on a broken path. He let it go.

And then he was done. Drained. The small amount of Grace still inside him was just enough to keep him alive. To keep him inside Jimmy's body. To keep him conscious enough to know that he had to return. He had to put to rights what he had done wrong. But his body was a dead weight on the floor. There was no energy. And Castiel knew that he didn't want to return and face the damage he had caused. He knew he had to, but by his father, he didn't want to.

 _But I've got high hopes, it takes me back to when we started  
High hopes, when you let it go, go out and start again_

Dean lay there still, curled in a ball. The tears were coming faster down the side of his face now. Sadness and despair clung to each tear and consumed his being. He needed his angel to return. He needed his angel to return so he could apologise and swear to never look again. If he could, he'd pop out his own eyeballs. Blind himself. He hoped, so desperately, that Cas would come back. The thought ripped a choking noise from his throat, and now the tears rushed like a waterfall. There were no more barriers.

He felt a burning in his bones.

 _High hopes, when it all comes to an end  
But the world keeps spinning around_

Cas felt it, felt the pain. Felt the despair, felt the reluctance. But eventually, his core principals pushed through and the physical resistance faded. He pushed his body from the destroyed floor and pushed out his wings again. He hoped he would be able to return. His wings were grey, a cold grey. He lifted them and began to fly back.

How he hoped he would get lost. How the world would disorientate and he could become lost in a world that didn't rotate the right way. Or a world that didn't rotate at all. But he didn't get lost. He found the hotel and when he landed, tears came unbidden to his cheeks. There was a hole in the wall and two bodies lay, charred and burnt.

 _And in my dreams, I meet the ghosts of all the people who have come and gone  
Memories, they seem to show up so quick but they leave you far too soon_

The tears came, but so did the blackness, eventually. And with the blackness, came a tirade of people. Of memories. Of ghosts. Of people he had failed. His mother. She stood there, silent and etheral, staring at him sadly. His father. A frown on his face, shoulders back and a flask in his hand. Jess. His brother's girlfriend stood there, a silent scream coming from her open mouth and a plea from her terrified blue eyes. Sam. His brother stood there next to Jess, blood dripping from his nose. He turned and showed Dean his back and the knife wound seemed to stretch and gape. And the last one to stand out: Castiel. His blue eyes flashed angrily and then he was blinded again as his Grace burst forth.

The ghosts vanished with the appearance of the light. Screams and gasps erupted in his ears. Screams of pain and death. The last screams of his mother and Jess. The gasping voices of his brother and father as they died. But from Castiel, there was nothing. Just a blank. And that silence screamed louder than any other.

 _Naïve I was just staring at the barrel of a gun  
And I do believe that, yeah_

Castiel stared at the bodies. He approached them cautiously, hoping that they weren't corpses. His hopes were dashed when he saw the woman's neck positioned impossibly and the man's blackened skull. Some of it had been crushed somehow and he could glimpse the grey-pink mottled colour of brains. He knelt and placed two fingers on the woman's forehead, willing for something to happen. Willing to heal her an bring her back.  
Nothing.

 _But I've got high hopes, it takes me back to when we started  
High hopes, when you let it go, go out and start again_

The white light vanished and he was remembering again. The first time they met when Dean was living. The barn, covered in sigils and wards. The clatter on the roof. The lights blew, shards of glass again. And then, the door had banged open and in he stalked. A fierce, blank, warrior's look on his face. Dean had shot him and he'd ignored it. Dean had to admit, he was scared then. And then Castiel spoke: I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition. Dean snarked something back, then plunged Ruby's knife into his chest.

Dean had let out his fear. It may have only been to himself, but he acknowledged it then, instead of shoving it to the side, building a wall around it and trying to forget. But then he had shoved it back again, and continued on his work. Continued on interrogating the angel, refusing to believe in the truth of his words.

 _High hopes, oh, when it all comes to an end_  
Now the world keeps spinning  
Yeah, the world keeps spinning around

Cas breathed a deep breath. He had to fix what he could. He moved on. The wall began to repair itself, bricks being formed from the atoms they became and then the cement holding them together reappearing.

The work continued. It seemed endless. He moved, repairing what he had broken. He knelt by the injured and fixed their wounds. He erased the terrible memory from their minds. They were fixed, physically and mentally. There would be no scarring. He would have none of it. The dead, he transported. Carrying their bodies to a nearby field, frequently ignored. The worst of the damage to their bodies he repaired. The absence of their souls was the only thing he couldn't fix..  
He continued on. And then he found Dean.

 _High hopes, it takes me back to when we started  
High hopes, when you let it go, go out and start again_

Dean's body shook. The memory shook him. The ghosts shook him. The screams. The screaming silence. The physical absence of his soul mate, made his body tremble violently. The fear of never seeing him again made him tremble even more. He felt like he was a mini earthquake. He was responsible for the deaths and absences of so many, he may well have been an earthquake. A 10 on the Richter scale.

He remembered the first time Cas had healed him. How he had pressed two cool fingers to his forehead and then the rushing hot-cold sensation that followed. Dean had blinked, shocked. And afraid. If that's all it took to heal, what did it take to kill? He had wondered and pondered this before deciding he didn't want to know.  
He fell victim the blackness again.

 _High hopes, oh,_  
And the world keeps spinning  
Ooh, yeah, this world keeps spinning

Castiel's breath hitched in his throat when his blue eyes saw Dean. His face, his beautiful face, had melted off the bone. What was left of the skull was charred and blackened. There was almost nothing left of his body. A knuckle joint was just visible beneath the remains of the shoulder blade. He let out a scream of despair and threw himself over the remains.

The remains of Dean. The remains of his beloved, his soul mate, for Castiel had begun to believe that even angels had souls. The remains of the man he loved, the remains of the man he had killed. Of all the deaths he had caused, this one was the worst. He screamed again, angelically. The windows he had just rebuilt, shattered again. He didn't care. He took huge, ragged breaths as his vessel's body shut down as the shock and exhaustion set in. He fell victim to the blackness, and even as he drowned in the dark, the tears fell from his face.

 _How this world keeps spinning around_


End file.
